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From Google to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, media types and hypes are falling head-over-heels over a 47-million year old primate fossil unveiled to the world Tuesday.
As LiveScience reporter Clara Moskowitz put it: You know science has made it big when the Google homepage logo is changed to celebrate a fossil finding and the mayor of New York shows up at a press conference to unveil it.
The LiveScience article continued:

The discovery was presented with much fanfare at a press conference at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where researchers called the finding a “missing link” and a publisher from Little, Brown (which put out a related book called “The Link”) called it “a scientific discovery that will undoubtedly revolutionize how we understand our own evolution.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the finding an “astonishing breakthrough.”

Not so fast you Ida-lovin’ cousins

‘Ida’ an extinct primate – and that’s all blasts the online headline at OneNewsNow.com. The story by Allie Martin leads: The president of Answers in Genesis says an alleged new “missing link” found by scientists is nothing more than an extinct primate.

According to Associated Press, scientists said while the creature is not a direct ancestor of monkeys and humans, it provides a good indication of what that ancestor may have looked like.

Ken Ham, president of the apologetics ministry Answers in Genesis, finds it ironic that the same scientists, in a research paper detailing their findings, toned down their pronouncements after pressure from colleagues in the scientific community.

“One of those reviewers said that…whether nor not it’s going to be a transitional form, or missing link, is a judgment for the scientific community,” Ham states. “And he’s quoted as saying that [issue] will be sorted out, or at least debated extensively in the community for years, once the paper is published.”

Ham says the fossil is similar to a modern lemur, and in no way resembles a human skeleton.

Watching the Ida spin is simply a matter of catching some headlines from around the world. Here’s an array of headlines and links to accompanying stories. You be the judge!

“John 3:16” has appeared in various forms at nationally televised sporting events over the years, but after University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow inscribed it on his eye black for last night’s BCS national championship game, the biblical reference became the most popular search item on Google.com.

Google Trends this morning had “John 3:16” ahead of searches for actress Mary Lynn Rajskub and the Windows 7 beta download. Searches for Tebow himself came in at No. 18…

Google has got to be the biggest mixed blessing in the information age. Sure, saying “just Google it” has probably been saving brain cell overload for many people, but at what cost?Google has grown into some mysterious bank of information gathering and dispensing, partly because its blazed its own territory.

This from AP:

Study: More Americans Use Google to Dig Up Information on People

NEW YORK — More Americans are Googling themselves — and many are checking out their friends, co-workers and romantic interests, too.

In a report Sunday, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said 47 percent of U.S. adult Internet users have looked for information about themselves through Google or another search engine.

That is more than twice the 22 percent of users who did in 2002, but Pew senior research specialist Mary Madden was surprised the growth wasn’t higher.

“Yes it’s doubled, but it’s still the case that there’s a big chunk of Internet users who have never done this simple act of plugging their name with search engines,” she said. “Certainly awareness has increased, but I don’t know it’s necessarily kept pace with the amount of content we post about ourselves or what others post about us.”

About 60 percent of Internet users said they aren’t worried about the extent of information about themselves online, despite increasing concern over how that data can be used.

Americans under 50 and those with more education and income were more likely to self-Google — in some cases because their jobs demand a certain online persona…